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Jean Gebser. THE EVER-PRESENT ORIGIN. Power Point Presentation for the Seminar on Psychology of Social Development organized by the University of Human Unity, Auroville. Two fundamental principles of Gebser’s approach.
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Jean Gebser THE EVER-PRESENT ORIGIN Power Point Presentation for the Seminar on Psychology of Social Development organized by the University of Human Unity, Auroville
Two fundamental principles of Gebser’s approach • 1) Latency - what is concealed - is the demonstrable presence of the future. It includes everything that is not yet manifest, as well as everything which has again returned to latency. Since we are dealing here primarily with phenomena of consciousness and integration, we will also have to investigate questions of history, the soul and the psyche, time, space, and the forms of thought. • Since the second part of this work is devoted to manifestations of the new consciousness, the first part must clarify questions relating to the manifestations of previous and present consciousness structures. We shall attempt to demonstrate the incipient concretion of time and the spiritual dimension which are preconditions of the aperspectival world. We shall also attempt to furnish evidence of the increasing efficacy of that spiritual reality (which is neither a mere psychic state nor an intellectual-rational form of representation). This will bring out the validity of our second guiding principle: • 2) Transparency (diaphaneity) is the form of manifestation (epiphany) of the spiritual. • Our concern is to render transparent everything latent "behind" and "before" the world - to render transparent our own origin, our entire human past, as well as the present, which already contains the future. We are shaped and determined not only by today and yesterday, but by tomorrow as well. The author is not interested in outlining discrete segments, steps or levels of man, but in disclosing the transparency of man as a whole and the interplay of the various consciousness structures which constitute him. This transparency or diaphaneity of our existence is particularly evident during transitional periods, and it is from the experiences of man in transition, experiences which man has had with the concealed and latent aspects of his dawning future as he became aware of them, that will clarify our own experiencing of the present.
Gebser’s Fundamental Discoveries • The beginning of the perspectival perception of the mental (=spatial) structure of consciousness (Ancient Greeks and medieval Europe) out of latent unperspectival and pre-perspectival structures. (Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo de Vinci, etc.) • The emergence of aperspectival consciousness in the 20th century out of perspectival structure (Picasso etc.) operating within and by all the latent structures in a transparent way for the manifestation of the Spirit. • “Transparency (diaphaneity) is the form of manifestation (epiphany) of the spiritual.”- says Gebser. He cannot fully accept the rational, perspectival conception of progress and evolution, which is not taking into account the latent structures of our being. • He also declines the Orientalist view, which is, according to him, turned only towards the past (mythical structure) in search of the origin to escape from the manifestation (mainly Buddhism and Advaita).
Sri Aurobindo on Evolution • We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. The Life Divine, (Page 3)
Structures of consciousness • Archaic( Primal man, Protanthropos, Purusha of the Rig Veda, Adam Kadmon of the Cabbalists, Osiris of the Egyptian-Gnostics) • Magic (‘here the primal man becomes the maker’; for the first time he faces the world; vital impulse and instinct thus unfold and develop a consciousness in dealing with Nature; witchcraft and sorcery, totem and taboo are the natural means of freeing himself from Nature) (appr. before 10 000 BC) • Mythical(brings the awareness of the inner life of the soul, its history and its origin, the primal Myth) (appr. before 2500 BC) • Mental (‘It individualizes man from his previously valid world, emphasizing his singularity and making his ego possible.’(p.76) It introduces a perspectival perception of the world (1250-1500 AD) by spatializing time perception; it represents life by conceptualizing it, distancing man from his own nature.) • Integral (freedom from all the structures by their transparent rearrangement into one integral oneness of being)
